A powerful husk crosses the mountains, leaving a trail of the dead in its wake. When efforts to track the killer end in disaster, the task falls to a man not expected to succeed: Jebediah Skayne, Lothario, hustler, hunter of demons.

Shadrak the Unseen should have known better. Stealing from one wizard on behalf of another was the sort of job he’d sworn never to take. But times were tough and grief had left its mark.

The thing that should have really warned him off, though, was that the artifact he’d been commissioned to retrieve was a ring crafted by none other than the Witch Queen of Thogani, the Desecrated City.

With the job half-done, Shadrak is caught between the minions of one wizard and the threats of the other. If he could just get the ring back to Pellor and the Stygian sorcerer who’d hired him, he’d have enough money to appease his creditors and buy himself some time.

But then his pockets are picked, the ring is taken, and the thief… is a ghost, silent, invisible.

Not daring to return to Pellor without the prize, Shadrak has no choice but to follow a barely discernible trail toward the last place in the world he wants to go:

New Londdyr, the greatest city on Aethir, where he once lorded it over the unified guilds.